Let Chennai not sink again, alerts Put Chutney in their latest video

The hills are being sold to mining companies, forests to business centers, farming land to extract hydrocarbons, the costs for sea facing bungalows..

A few lines from Put Chutney’s latest spoken word monologue featuring Rajmohan Arumugam is enough to understand the intensity and impact of the many ways in which the nature is being exploited by people.

Released last Tuesday, the video titled Save Chennai Save Ennore has already crossed 78k views. Ramohan Arumugam, writer and actor of Put Chutney, as he personifies the city of Chennai in the video, he talks about how our natural ecosystem is being sold for commercial profits.

The video brings to light the largest ongoing conversion of wetlands into real estate in Chennai which is happening on the sprawling Ennore Creek to the north of the city. In the event of another flood, this is bound to affect 10 Lakh Chennai residents, according to researchers.

“The ideation started from a casual discussion that happened in the Put Chutney office when we were talking about the  severity of the flood last time. And we were wondering what the consequences will be if one such calamity happens one more time, says Rajmohan. “The discussion paved way to a research and we came to know about the Ennore encroachment which is also being encouraged by the government and we felt the need to do something about it,” he added.

On realising that 90 per cent of Chennaites don’t  even know that such a place exists, the team decided to put together the video.

Having been in to the social media video creation for the past two years, the Chennai-based artist has also done over eight videos throwing lights on social issues such as the Kaveri dispute, Jallikattu issue and such.

Ask him what inspires him to make such videos and he says all of them are mostly born out of necessity. “All of us were badly affected in the floods that happened in 2015 and we don’t want Chennai to go through that again,” says Rajmohan while adding that through videos such as this the team hopes to spread awareness among people and at the same time putting pressure on the policy makers.

With 30 people in the Chennai team, Put Chutney is Culture Machine’s digital channel in South India. “We are trying to set up a trend where instead of just funny and entertaining videos, we focus our work on something that is more result oriented and that discusses the issues of the hour,” Rajmohan signs off  hinting on Put Chutney’s upcoming video series on various other social issues.

Watch the full video here: